Origins
by EvaCybele
Summary: Where you came from is sometimes more important than where you end up - a series of stories about the Dragoons from before they chained themselves to madness. Chapter 1 - Shirley, the original White-Silver Dragoon.


Her mother was a midwife, her father an alchemist. They met only once, and never spoke to one another. Shirley was born nine months later, with her mother's hazel eyes and her father's flaming red hair. Had she been a boy, she would have gone to her father as soon as she was weaned – but she was a girl, bred for healing skill, so she stayed with her mother and the other human midwives of the Birth City.

As a girl she helped her mother by fetching and carrying, watching and learning. By the time she was a maiden, she was practicing her skills by delivering human babies, red-faced and squalling. She was woman grown by the time she was allowed to assist the Wingly mothers, reclining on their plush couches in the palace, delicate and frail. Birth did not go well for Winglies, for mother or child – Shirley's mother told her that was why they were so controlling of which babes were born and which died, unformed, in the womb. Better to kill a magically-weak babe than lose a strong mother, they thought, and save the strength of the mother for children that would better the race. They thought the same about slave children, only they had no way of knowing if a human child would be born twisted or near-sighted – so rather than aborting the weak, they simply slaughtered them like cattle.

It was simply part of life in the Birth City – once you pulled a human child from its mother's body, you handed it off to a Wingly for inspection. If the child was flawed, it was taken away. If not, it was returned. Shirley's mother birthed five other children; two of them were boys, and went to their fathers. The other three were found wanting, and not seen again. Shirley had delivered the last two herself. Both were girls, the little sisters for whom she had been wishing. The next year, she went to the Crystal Palace.

As a a young and pretty junior midwife, Shirley took care of the pregnant Wingly women, the ones whose children had already been deemed strong enough to be born. She played nurse and maidservant, administering potions designed to strengthen mother and child. Some she distributed as she was bid; some she smuggled home for the pregnant women who lived with her. It was a small rebellion, one that would earn her a beating if discovered. It was all the risk she dared take, until a woman came begging for a favor. She was a weaver, the paramour of a laborer who was also owned by her master. The Winglies tolerated their dalliance, but they would not allow her to bear his child. Instead, they wanted to breed her with another weaver. The woman begged Shirley for a fertility potion, so that she might conceive her lover's child in the nights before laying with the stranger.

Shirley nearly refused – she had no business with any of those potions, and they were well-guarded – until she remembered the tiny, scrunched faces of her baby sisters. Her resolve hardened, and she agreed.

The Winglies were waiting for her when she returned. They had the woman, as well, a fresh burn scar twisting the left side of her face. She would attract no more lovers, looking like that. The woman was sobbing, apologizing – Shirley's heart turned as hard and heavy as a stone. She fought the Wingly men who took her, but their hands were cruel and their magic overwhelming.

When she woke, there was an ache between her legs. She was bound to a table in the Crystal Palace, and an old slave told her what they'd done. Her little rebellions had been noted, all these years, but her skill had protected her. This latest theft was the last straw, though – and rather than possibly break a useful slave, they'd simply removed parts of her. They'd made her barren. The only children she would ever hold would be those she pulled from their mothers; and later, when she was old and no longer pleasing to look on, she would administer death to infants that were unsatisfactory. If she rebelled again, they would give her the mark of the whore, depriving her of the protection of her trade, and let an Wingly who so chose take her as he pleased. It would break her spirit but would leave her body whole enough for her duties. To Wingly eyes, it was the perfect solution; to human women, the ultimate fear.

She played meek and mild for a week, the fury of what had been done to her – and to other women, who had come before her – raging within, brightly but silently, until the day she met the old woman. The crone was bent-backed and shuffling, with scars from whippings and more. Though she looked battered and beaten, spirit still shone from her pale eyes. She seized Shirley's hand with her own, her pale, gnarled hands pulling them into a side room. She pulled a lock of Shirley's waist-length red hair and held it up against a lock of her own – dusty and faded, but the same hue of red.

Her mother had always told her that she'd gotten her hair from her father, who had been the son of a great, but troublesome healer – that was why they'd chosen to breed him to her, a promising midwife and submissive slave. Shirley thought she understood what the old woman was trying to tell her, and nodded. The old woman pulled several bottles from a small satchel she carried, filled with thin clear fluid and stoppered with wax. The midwives called it "bottled death" - the potion that unraveled life still in the womb without causing pain or damage to the mother. The old woman was one of the crones who distributed that death to unworthy infants. She held up her bottle, and pointed at Shirley's own satchel. They made the switch swiftly, dozens of bottles each, and the old woman threw her head back, mouth open wide. An odd clacking sound issued from her throat, and Shirley could see that she had no tongue. Shirley smiled back at her, eyes brimming with angry tears. The old woman shook her head, beamed, and ambled away with her little doses of life for all the weak Wingly babes that were once destined to die.

The bottled death was meant to be as pleasant as possible – tasteless and odorless, unlike most poisons. Shirley mixed it into tea and wine, smiling as the women boasted of the powerful, healthy children that were barely more than seeds within their wombs. Each would be a credit to their race, and bring glory to the Wingly empire. Each would die before the end of the night, dissolving into blood and magic.

Shirley smiled and sang and praised them, the magical children that would have been the next generation of oppression for her people. She thought of children that she had delivered herself and never seen again – and when she ran short of those, she thought of her own children, the ones she'd dreamed she would have. She had enough doses for every pregnant Wingly in the Crystal Palace, even the ones who would have soon slipped into labor. Close to a hundred children, the best and strongest this generation had to offer. She murdered them all and walked away smiling – and when the time came for her to return to her home, she walked into the city and lost herself among the crowds.


End file.
